


breathless, weightless

by tentacledicks



Category: Watch Dogs (Video Games)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Superheroes/Superpowers, Canon-Typical Violence, Identity Porn, M/M, Penis In Vagina Sex, Trans Male Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-07
Updated: 2020-04-07
Packaged: 2021-03-01 23:01:05
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,030
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23515078
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tentacledicks/pseuds/tentacledicks
Summary: The Fox isn't one of the most notorious Masks in Chicago—far from it. He's just one of a hundred different covered faces, clever enough to keep his head down and his heists small enough to avoid media attention. It's kept him safe. It's kept his family safe. The only Hero he's caught the attention of is Seraph, an enigmatic and faceless beacon in white... and the only person who can can keep up with the Fox's tricks.After almost a decade of cat and mouse, Aiden's getting tired of the Mask game. He's too afraid to come clean to his family or the man he's in love with, and he's too guilty about his ongoing relationship with Seraph to break it off either. When the shit hits the fan, putting his family at risk, he find himself running out of options and forced to rely on the one person he knows could fuck him over in a heartbeat.
Relationships: Damien Brenks & Aiden Pearce, Jordi Chin/Aiden Pearce
Comments: 8
Kudos: 26
Collections: Small Fandoms Bang Round Nine





	breathless, weightless

**Author's Note:**

> This has been bumming around my WIPs folder for a while now, but the SFBB was a good kick in the ass to finish it. A huge thank you to danceswithgary for doing the art for this! You can find their art [here](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23500033).

His back hit the floor punishingly hard, pain jolting up his spine and flaring across his shoulders. That he was hitting anything at all—that Seraph was letting him touch ground again—meant that he’d lost. He’d lost the second Seraph had shown up, like he always did if he wasn’t fast enough to escape before the League sent their heaviest hitter out. Back in the old days, he might have been able to get away but—

Well, the Fox had earned his reputation, for good or for ill. And Seraph was the only one able to catch him, time and time again.

“No cameras,” the Hero said, his voice cool and anonymous with the standard issue synthesizer smoothing out all his tonal differences. “Not a bad place to run, if you wanted to stay hidden. Almost like you’re expecting something.”

“What, getting tired already?” Aiden wheezed, going to push himself upright. Since he _was_ on the ground, maybe he could—

Quicker than a thought, quicker than even he could react, he was yanked up off the floor and thrown backwards. The room flew past him in a dull blur, construction equipment and half-finished walls barely registering against the dizzying spin of momentum he was caught in. He inhaled sharply, his entire body tensing in anticipation of pain, and _blinked_.

Time stopped.

Aiden hovered in place, caught in the telekinetic trap of Seraph’s mind. Nothing to touch, nothing to use as leverage to break the hold of invisible shackles on his limbs. He’d done it, early on in their careers, but after a decade of his shit, Seraph had learned. As long as Aiden wasn’t touching something, he couldn’t speed away. And unlike physical bonds, Seraph’s mind wasn’t something he could wear his way out of with a bit of patience.

He blinked. The room blurred again, Seraph a white fulcrum on which the world spun, barely a foot or two away.

He blinked. Everything froze, Seraph’s blank acrylic helmet hiding his expression. Aiden was a bare couple feet away from the concrete wall now, which was likely his final destination.

He blinked. Seraph’s hand reached for him, the reinforced gloves gleaming dully in the dark, distant streetlights reflecting off the joints.

He blinked. The timing was perfect, his shoulders and palms just touching the wall. Seraph was close enough to touch now too, if Aiden weren’t caught by his thoughts. Instead of trying to reach forward, he pressed his hands back, pushing some of that reserved kinetic energy into them.

Start. Stop. Start. Stop. Start. Stop. By millisecond intervals, he let himself slam into the wall, diffusing the force until it barely stung to hit it, cracks spreading out underneath his fingers as the concrete crumbled under the power of Seraph’s mind. He wasn’t the most destructive Hero, but he could come damn close when he wanted to.

And now his fist was tight around the collar of Aiden’s custom jacket, tantalizingly close to the mask the Fox wore to hide his identity. Only a stupid Mask let people see their face, and neither of them were terribly stupid. Aiden’s heart pounded, his mouth going dry as Seraph pushed in close, the hard lines of his body armor digging into the less protective fabric of Aiden’s jeans.

“I just thought I’d give you the chance to lay down,” Seraph said, no indication of emotion in his mask or his voice. “You’ve been up against the wall the last couple times, and I wanted to be _considerate_.”

“I’m struggling to see you as a considerate lover,” Aiden wheezed, unable to help a ragged gasp when Seraph rocked their hips together in retaliation. Like every other member of the League, Seraph’s costume was mostly standardized, but that codpiece was _custom_. Had to be.

“For someone on the losing side, you’re pretty mouthy.” The electric, floaty feeling of telekinetic energy disappeared, Seraph using his muscle alone to yank Aiden off the wall and spin him around. With a bruising grip on Aiden’s hips, Seraph pinned him to the wall, his legs forcing Aiden’s thighs further apart. “So how are you going to make it up to me?”

“Well, I didn’t put underwear on this morning,” Aiden said, muffled by his mask and the wall his face was pushed into.

A low, soft huff of laughter filtered through Seraph’s mask, the synthesizer distorting the sound. The rough hands on his hips shoved downwards, forcing his pants down, and Aiden let out a sharp noise of want when the hard pressure of the codpiece ground into him. Five years ago, ten years ago, he might have struggled, put up more of a fight, pretended he didn’t want it, but—he was older now. And a decade of fighting the same damn Hero, the only one who’d _ever_ caught up to him and kept catching up, that made things both muddy and clear.

He didn’t know Seraph’s name. He’d never seen the man’s face. But he’d taken his cock so many times that it felt perfectly natural to brace an arm against the wall, haul his jeans down just a little bit lower, push his ass back into the armored curve of Seraph’s body. Being a Mask meant getting used to a world of anonymity, and even if they had an _unconventional_ relationship, well. It wasn’t like they were the only ones playing out this fake fucking Romeo and Juliet scenario. 

Every Hero had a Mask they wanted, either in the team or on the streets. Every petty criminal with powers thought they could seduce a Leaguer down from that ivory fucking tower and win the game that way.

Aiden knew better. The Fox could fuck Seraph every day of the week, and it wouldn’t stop the man from turning him in anyways. But by the same token, Seraph’s jurisdiction ended the moment he handed Aiden over; he had no obligation to follow the police convoy, and no legal right to keep Aiden contained once his duties had been administered. So even if he handed Aiden over, every time, they both knew that no fucking prison could hold him.

“ _Somebody’s_ eager,” Seraph said, voice low enough that his synthesizer buzzed in an effort to project it. He’d found the packet of lube in Aiden’s back pocket, tucked up against the thin leather wallet with his lockpicks.

“It’s called planning ahead. I thought you appreciated that sort of thing.” His eyes squeezed shut as Seraph’s gloved fingers dragged over his folds, a hot flush rising over his neck. Christ, he felt like a slut every time this happened.

“I do, I really do. Never let it be said that I don’t.” There was the soft click of acrylic hitting itself, Seraph’s hands disappearing from his hips. His gloves hit the cement floor with soft thuds and Aiden took in a shaky breath at the sound of the packet tearing open.

“Condom’s in the other pocket,” he said, his own hand coming up to tug up the mask over his mouth and nose. The mesh fabric was usually easy enough to breathe through, but with his airflow already restricted by the position, it was growing more difficult to get enough air. Dangerous to unmask enough to breathe, and yet— 

Seraph’s lubed up fingers pushed into him, driving deep as his thumb pressed against Aiden’s asshole, and he moaned helplessly. He didn’t need the fingering, not really, not as eager as he was for it anyways, but it felt _good_ to have Seraph’s thick fingers inside of him, one hand playing him like an instrument as he heard Seraph struggle with the condom.

“Need help?” Aiden asked, gasping when Seraph’s fingers thrusted in retaliation. “I’ve got—fuck—two hands free.”

“You always buy the ones with the _worst_ wrappers,” Seraph growled, the buzz of the synthesizer adding a deeper element of danger to it. A shudder rolled through Aiden, his hand falling from the edge of his mask to reach behind himself, and a second later he felt the skin-warmed foil packet press into it.

“I do it out of spite.” Seraph’s fingers drove into him again, rough and unsympathetic, and Aiden’s own hands fumbled as he tried to tear the packet open. His costume was too tight, too heavy, restricting around the desperate heat spreading through his limbs. Somewhere along the line, he’d gotten _easy_.

His fingers shook as he handed the condom back, and he thought that maybe being easy wasn’t so bad. Not when Seraph’s hands disappeared again for just long enough to roll the condom on, not when the blunt head of his cock pressed against Aiden’s hole bare moments later. Being easy was _great_ , especially when it meant Seraph’s nails were biting into his hips, his thick cock forcing Aiden wide open with slow, careful thrusts.

“You are,” Seraph’s hips drew back, then snapped forwards as he seated himself fully, “so goddamn _tight_.”

“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” Aiden hissed, his hands braced against the wall as he struggled to breathe. Seraph’s body was heavy, his armor as hard and unyielding as his dick, and he was trapped—trapped with technically his greatest enemy, trapped with an agent of the government who had no love lost for him, trapped in a half-constructed building with no one around to hear them.

Seraph’s cock split him open with slow, smooth movements. He was teasing, occasionally driving in hard enough to make Aiden swear but otherwise keeping it to easy, lazy thrusts. Just enough to keep him on edge, not enough to satisfy.

No one was around to hear him beg. Aiden broke, forehead pressed to the hard concrete, and whispered, “Please fuck me.”

“That’s what I like to hear.” Seraph’s fingers dug in harder, bruising the pale skin stretched over Aiden’s hips, but it didn’t matter. Not when the next roll of his hips was equally vicious, driving in so deep that Aiden choked out his name in desperation, the fabric of his mask damp with his sweat where it stuck to his forehead.

And this—

This was punishingly, wonderfully familiar. More than the joy behind the score, more than the thrill of running from the Heroes, more than knowing just how easy it was to steal from people who looked down on him, _this_ was the thing that kept drawing Aiden back in. He’d have walked away from Damien’s ambition and the knife-edged danger of crime years ago, but he couldn’t stop coming back to Seraph’s cock buried like it belonged in him, Seraph’s brutal touch leaving marks every time they came together, Seraph’s synthesized voice crooning vicious depravity in his ears.

Like a fucking idiot, he always came back. Like a fucking idiot, he pretended Seraph wanted it as bad as he did too.

* * *

Four days later, when the soreness had vanished from his muscles and none of the bruises were showing anymore, he met up with Jordi for lunch. Their schedules didn’t intersect quite as often, with tax season wrapping up, but that didn’t stop them from doing their best. And at least Aiden had the excuse of mostly setting his own schedule to justify matching up with Jordi’s.

“So you have these guys, right, stupid fucking guys,” Jordi was saying, hands moving animatedly as he barely avoided knocking his drink off the table, “who think that, somehow, we’re not fucking _aware_ of how they move money. _Especially_ when it’s large amounts.”

“It gets flagged if they sell and deposit it in the bank, right?” Aiden asked, swirling his mimosa a little. He wasn’t usually a fan of mixed drinks but getting mimosas at this place was tradition by now. Breaking tradition was not on.

“Right, anything over a certain amount—and if they structure it to avoid getting flagged, that’s fraud. So it’s a fine line to walk, and these motherfuckers are doing it in clown shoes. They’re fucking it all up.” Jordi paused long enough to take a big bite from his sandwich.

“I was seeing in the news that you guys busted a bunch of crypto traders,” he said, internally rolling his eyes at the people who’d been caught up in that sting. He and Damien were careful when they moved money around, Damien’s fingers on the keyboard the gift that kept on giving, Aiden’s slow and steady purchases of cash-equivalents covering everything else. Gold, gemstones, jewelry, that was the trick. They had a system.

“Oh, don’t even _get_ me started,” Jordi groaned, swallowing the rest of food before leaning in close to make a point. “It’s the tip of the fucking iceberg with these guys, and it’s honking clown cars all the way down. If they just reported their goddamn income, we wouldn’t _give_ a shit, but every stupid motherfucker on the planet thinks he’s smarter than the IRS, right?”

“Uh-huh.” Aiden smiled, watching Jordi wind up for the rest of his rant, then blinked.

The world around him went silent, the constant wall of noise from the road disappearing as the cars stopped moving. The people on the sidewalk froze in place, their waitress halfway through her section as she navigated over to their table to refill the mimosas, a few birds caught in the middle of flight as they launched up towards a nest on a balcony. There was a particular golden haze to the world when he slowed things down this much, and Aiden didn’t worry about breathing with the air around him gone still.

The golden light smoothed over the edge of Jordi’s cheekbone, catching on the folds on his suit and shining down the individual strands of his hair. Even stopped in motion, Jordi’s face was animated—his eyes bright and wide, teeth gleaming, smile broad, his skin wrinkling at the corners of his eyes and curling around the joy on his lips. There were a thousand imperfections Aiden could map out on his skin if he really wanted to, and he missed all of them in favor of dragging his gaze over the mole on Jordi’s cheek, the curve of his body inwards as he leaned close to tell Aiden _everything_.

If he did this too often, it would start getting obvious. He knew that. Even if no one had figured out that his super speed and super reflexes weren’t muscle-based, all it took was one person putting the pieces together. But Aiden couldn’t help himself sometimes, not when he hadn’t seen Jordi in over a week and he’d been caught in a loop of longing for him.

What an idiot he was sometimes. It wasn’t that he couldn’t pick up on the flirting—he could. He’d known full damn well when Damien started flirting too, but Damien had a wife and child, and Aiden already couldn’t abide by the danger to them. It was why he’d gently distanced himself from Nicky and her son too, making sure that he took them on vacations, making sure she got to doctors’ appointments now that she was pregnant again, but it wasn’t worth the risk to be closer. Having a family when you were a Mask was a stupid idea; a federally licensed Hero might be able to put his family into witness protection, but a criminal taking advantage of the system was shit out of luck.

And he knew that. Maybe that was part of why he kept flirting back and then going shy whenever Jordi hinted at something more. The risk was simply intolerable, Jordi’s life hanging in the balance of the complicated power games the city played constantly. If it wasn’t another villainous Mask, it would be a Hero with far fewer scruples than they ought to have.

Aiden liked to think that Seraph wasn’t one of them but, well. He knew better. Maybe he couldn’t see Seraph killing an innocent woman and her kids, but he knew the Hero intimately now, in more than one way; the sort of fucked up relationship they had didn’t grow overnight and after a decade of the call and return of their violent sex, he knew enough to think that Seraph might be a jealous lover too. No proof of it, of course. Just like there was no proof to link either of them to their civilian identities.

He wasn’t stupid, though. Plenty of people with powers kept them hidden, secret, safe. Nicky was one of them, with what she thought was just uncanny luck. It was only sick fucks like him that went into the business of being a Mask. It was only fucked up sellouts like Seraph that went into it with the blessing of the federal government. It was only fucking narcissists like Damien that thought they could play the game without anything to put them on the same level.

None of them were the sort of people that could be trusted with something as fragile and hopeful as a heart. So Aiden stepped back when Jordi stepped forward, stepped forward when Jordi stepped back, hated himself every second for playing the game with a man he genuinely thought of as a friend—and he _wanted_ , every second of every day, for something better.

He blinked again, and time resumed.

“So they’re using a trading platform, right, and it’s not like we aren’t tracking that shit—we’re not fucking morons, okay? And we subpoenaed them, I’m sure you saw that in the news, and get all the information. And get _this_ : nearly eighty fucking percent of these stupid shitheads haven’t just been underreporting their income, they’ve been doing it and trying to get refunds on top of that shit!” Jordi leaned back, throwing his hands in the air. “For fucks sake, if it was just a minor clerical error that would be one thing, but _this_ shit is just—”

“Stupid?” Aiden offered, sipping at his mimosa and wondering what a life with Jordi would be like. Tax season would be hell, sure, and Jordi was always pretty firm about keeping silent on pending investigations until they hit the news, but everything else. The nights when he came home early. The break he’d get once they’d finished crawling through the millions of returns filed, fraudulently or otherwise.

Waking up in his bed, with his arms around Aiden’s waist, with his face tucked into Aiden’s shoulder, with the air conditioning going and no one else in the apartment to bother them. He knew Jordi cooked, but he wanted to know what it was like to taste that every day, to get Jordi’s stories and Jordi’s jokes and Jordi’s smile in his life every day, wanted to know what it would be like if they could just stay like this _forever_.

“ _Stupid_ ,” Jordi agreed acidly, downing his drink in one go. Though he couldn’t know what Aiden’s thoughts were, the timing still made him wince slightly. His fault for having pipe dreams like that.

He threw that self-deprecating thought out, returning his attention to the important thing. “So how long are you going to be cleaning up this mess? Sounds like it’s going to be a pretty big workload.”

“Well, we’ve mailed out forms to all the big offenders, but there’s no way of knowing how many of them are going to be properly scared shitless and fix their fucking taxes.” Jordi shrugged, then stretched his arms high above his head. It made his silk shit go taut over the muscles in his chest, and Aiden throttled the urge to stop time again just to admire it. “And there’s a big thing coming down the pipeline, apparently, so… Three weeks, maybe? I hope to fucking _god_ it’s not a month. I’m not me without my me time.”

Aiden snorted softly but didn’t disagree. He ached in those spaces where Jordi was busy with work and he had nothing else to distract himself with but that was the choice he’d made ten years ago. It wasn’t like he could change things now. “We’ll put a pin on the date then, huh?”  
  
“Count on it,” Jordi said, smiling bright as the sun.

* * *

The apartment he shared with Damien was dark and empty when he got home. Aiden flicked on the kitchen light, squinting at the pile of half-washed dishes, then decided that was a problem for later. He wasn’t quite at his best, Seraph’s ungentle treatment leaving its claws under his skin even after the bruises had faded, but he was good enough for some light larceny at least. The likelihood of Iraq causing problems—big problems, League sized problems, the kind of problems that overshadowed everything else—was high. Something about spring dragging into summer brought the worst out of people.

When it came to villainous Masks, there was a lot of ‘worse’ to go around.

Probably he should focus on driving instead of running around in costume, especially so close on the heels of his last fight, but Aiden had that antsy energy running under his skin too. Not like Damien would turn down a chance to make money, not when Aiden was the one sticking his nose in the shit, and he might as well get something going for his partner to eyeball later. He wasn’t as good at the computers, not yet, but he knew enough to set the stage for Damien’s particular brand of magic.

The Hound wasn’t a Mask, not really, not in the way that the Fox and Seraph and Iraq were, but he could do some serious damage too. That was why they had a safehouse for Damien to work from while Aiden was out in the field. Safer to have one half of the team, the vulnerable half, tucked away where any stray Hero couldn’t find him. Damien wasn’t one of the freaks, after all. He just desperately wanted to be.

The living room was a mess too, old pizza boxes sharing floorspace with incriminating documents and some of the stolen goods Aiden had yet to pawn. He preferred stealing money outright, but they had to diversify sometimes, just to be safe. Various internet auction sites made decently places to push stolen goods, and the banks in the area had gotten pretty smart to his tricks.

Not like that mattered in the long run—they’d figured out that Chicago’s seedy underworld was a much fatter lamb to hunt. But _that_ had to be done carefully too. Masks might fuck over anyone and everyone, but there were certain rules to how they operated—let the civilians be once the Heroes showed up, only target other Masks in costume, never shit where you ate. Aiden really couldn’t care if the Club hated him, but that third rule was pretty critical for the bad guys. If Lucky Quinn caught wind that the Fox and Hound had been behind some of his big failures for the last two years, they’d be in fucking trouble.

They’d been good, though. He and Damien had been careful. Big, bright, scandalous robberies in broad daylight, where the Fox got away or tussled with Seraph before escaping custody. Stealthy, quiet, hidden forays into Club territory, Aiden moving past cameras too swiftly for them to register before holing up somewhere with hardline access to whatever computers Damien needed. They’d been as safe as they could be, doing the job that they were.

At least the office and bedroom were a little bit neater, Damien’s territory maintained meticulously while the bedroom saw neither of them so often for them to make a mark. Aiden picked up a stack of blueprints next to his own computer tower, thumbing through them with a small frown, then set them down again as he moved to Damien’s computer.

Probably he was spending time with his family. Probably it wasn’t something to worry about. Probably.

It was just…

Well, Damien and his wife had been on the fritz, recently. It meant having Damien in his space all the time now, cursing and snarling under his breath about the bitch he was married to, making more determined passes at Aiden whenever they were stuck on the same sleep schedule. If Damien _was_ trying to make it up to her—or hide the more obvious signs of infidelity—maybe that could explain why he wasn’t bumming around the apartment like usual. It wouldn’t be out of the question, his partner swinging back into the honeymoon period as he tried to keep his wife (his alibi) in his corner. But things had been _bad_ this time, really bad, and Aiden didn’t think it was the kind of bad Damien could come back from.

And it was the middle of the day, which was when _he_ usually slept while Damien plotted. They did their best work in the evening, just before midnight, or the afternoon, when Aiden was still fresh and Damien on his second pot of coffee. Mornings and lunchtime weren’t the times Damien headed off to one of his various side pieces. He reserved that for the early morning.

Damien was the brains of the operation, as he so often liked to remind Aiden, but he wasn’t the only one who could work his way around a desktop. The fact that Aiden knew all his passwords helped, but nothing in Damien’s emails or recently opened documents gave him any clue towards his partner’s location. His phone went straight to voicemail, meaning it was off, and Aiden couldn’t find anything else on the desk that said Damien had run out for groceries or something.

The silence began to grate, not even the soft whir of the computer fans enough to pull Aiden’s attention from the yawning, aching emptiness of the apartment. With Damien’s desk not forthcoming, Aiden left the office, flicking on the television as he passed through the living room towards the kitchen. He’d make something for dinner and then start trying to track Damien down. Start at his wife’s house. Move out from there.

It was luck that had him turning from the microwave as some pundit on the news droned on about the election year, luck that had him glancing down at the ticker running across the bottom of the screen. He didn’t watch the news, he never watched the news, but Aiden found himself transfixed by the white words so innocuous passing across his vision.

‘ **THE HOUND ARRESTED IN THE LOOP’.**

* * *

His knee bounced with anxious fervor, subconsciously timed to half-seconds, the glow of his phone the only light in the dark parking garage. The other lights had been knocked out a few weeks ago, the least important casualty in one of Iraq’s attacks on the Mad Mile. Iraq had been in open war with the Club for some time now, heedless of the civilian lives he put at stake in the process, and it meant there were a lot of people trying to take him down.

Not Seraph yet, not really. Telekinesis and pyrokinesis were unhappy bedmates, and the focus with Iraq was still mitigation. Only once the League had given up on their PR team would they give the kill order to Seraph—they didn’t like being caught as murderers on camera. Their reputation was staked on the fact that they were the good guys. The fact that so many Heroes were sociopaths on a very short leash was supposed to be confidential information.

The other Masks in the city hated Iraq too, but Aiden mostly tried to steer his sister clear of any areas he thought the son of a bitch might target. No point in drawing that ire. No point in asking for favors either, even if he thought Iraq might jump on the chance—this was too sensitive a mission.

Only one other option, then, and the reason Aiden was hiding in the wreckage of some other Masks’ fight.

‘ **POLICE CARAVAN PILEUP ON 41, TWO DEAD’**

**‘THE HOUND NO LONGER IN CUSTODY’**

**‘FOX AND HOUND WORKING WITH THE CHICAGO SOUTH CLUB? OPINION’**

**‘QUESTIONS ABOUT LAW ENFORCEMENT’S ABILITY TO CONTROL MASKS RISE IN WAKE OF ANOTHER HIGH-PROFILE ESCAPE’**

**‘THE FOX ISSUES OPEN CHALLENGE TO LEAGUE OF HEROES: A SLIDESHOW’**

He scrolled through the headlines and bounced his leg a quarter of a second faster, just this side of human speed, just slow enough that it wasn’t suspicious. The last one had, as promised, a slideshow, his makeshift graffiti scrawled over the walls of the League compound and the Metropolitan Hero Museum. His symbol. Orange, just to be sure the message got through. Not a challenge, despite what the news was speculating.

Just a message. No way to personalize it without raising suspicions, but of course the Fox would have to respond to the arrest of his partner. Of course he would. And Seraph, after a decade of the cat and mouse game they played, would be smart enough to read the things Aiden couldn’t tell him so explicitly.

His chest felt like it was going to explode, an iron vice wrapped taut around his ribs while his heart frantically tried to escape the cage the vice made. That Seraph would show up wasn’t in question—no, the thing Aiden was terrified of, the thing he couldn’t speak name to, was the idea that Seraph wouldn’t be willing to help. They’d fucked for years, but they weren’t friends. They were a Hero and a villainous Mask, two sides of an unbalanced conflict, the fucking ivory tower elite and the fucking trash that dared to disregard the outstretched hand of the League.

If Seraph didn’t want to help him, he wouldn’t. If Seraph didn’t give a shit about Aiden being unmasked, there weren’t any other options left.

The Club had Damien now, and unlike the police, they wouldn’t stop with a little prison brutality and interrogation of Damien’s family. They would squeeze, and squeeze, and squeeze, until Damien finally popped, and then they’d kill his family and Aiden’s family too. They’d _figured them out_ , god help him, and they’d gotten Damien arrested so they could scoop him up when he was captive and docile. Maybe because they hadn’t been sure if he was only human.

By now, the Club knew he was human. The only thing in question anymore was whether or not Damien would hold out long enough for Aiden to reach him. He was a coward down to the core, but he had a self-preservation streak a mile wide too. Damien wasn’t stupid enough to think that the Club would let him live, let him _walk_ after this, and that meant he might keep his mouth shut a little while longer.

He just had to stay quiet for long enough. Just long enough for Aiden to get to him. Just long enough for Seraph to agree to help. Just long enough.

Out of the silence of the parking garage came the steady tread of Seraph’s heavy footsteps. The man could be weightless if he chose, but the drama of it all seemed to feed him. Aiden’s head snapped up, the white shape emerging from the darkness like a ghost out of his worst nightmares. Funny, how he’d never really thought of Seraph as menacing, even knowing every brutal trick the Hero had up his sleeve. Now, with his choices cut down to this, Aiden couldn’t see the cold lines of Seraph’s armor as anything but menace, white and unfeeling and cruel.

“ _Nice_ graffiti,” Seraph said, his modified voice dripping with sarcasm.

“I needed your attention and I couldn’t risk it from a robbery,” Aiden said, standing and pocketing his phone in an inside pocket before zipping his jacket up. “I need your help, Seraph. The Club has Hound.”

“Obviously. Why should I care?” The blank mirror of Seraph’s mask gave nothing away, no hint of emotion. No hint that he’d help or hinder Aiden’s cause. Not a good sign, but not a bad one yet either.

“The Hound knows who I am, Seraph. My face, my name, my identity. My family. We’ve been…” He shut his eyes, breathing in and taking comfort in the fact that Seraph couldn’t see his expression either. “We’ve been a lot more discreet about our thefts from Club funds, and Lucky Quinn won’t call in the League anyways, but he’s clearly got us figured out. I don’t want him to hurt my family.”

The mask didn’t move, Seraph’s breathing soft enough that Aiden couldn’t even hear that much. No response. Panic slithered through him, his heart pounding as he fought to stay current, fought to keep himself from freezing everything and having a panic attack. He wouldn’t be able to return to the same position if he did.

“Please,” Aiden said, voice cracking.

“This is a lot to ask,” Seraph finally said, his head tipping ever so slightly. The modulation on his voice stripped the words of any emotional context, the more subtle notes disappearing under harsh electronic tones.

“I know.”

“I could get in a lot of trouble for agreeing to this. If the League finds out I’m striking deals with illegally operating Masks, I could even get pulled off the main team. That’s a pretty big punishment for someone like me.”

“I know.” Sweat beaded on his neck, at the small of his back, soaking through the wool of his mask and sweater, leaving him clammy and feeling ill. If Seraph refused, he’d have to do it alone, and Aiden knew that all the time in the world wouldn’t be enough. He couldn’t be _that_ fast. “I’ll do anything you want, Seraph. I just need him back. _Please_.”

The silence dragged on for what felt like years, even if Aiden was keenly, horribly aware that it was only seconds. Eventually, with no inflection in his voice, Seraph said, “I want you to unmask.”

Aiden’s heart stopped.

“Not here,” Seraph continued, tapping one armored finger on the chin of his mask, “not until after we get your boyfriend back. But if I’m sticking my neck on the line for you, I want to know who you are. Who you _really_ are. Fair’s fair—I’ll put your family in witness protection to make sure your boyfriend can’t get them killed again too. But I want to see your _face_ , Fox.”

He blinked.

In the empty silence that expanded out around him, the world stopping all at once, Aiden doubled over and heaved. Ice dripped down his spine, cold fear spreading through him as he realized he was _fucked_. He was so unbelievably fucked, all because Damien had to go wandering out in costume for god knows _what_ fucking reason, and now everything was going to come crashing down. If Nicky got put into protection, _he_ wouldn’t be able to see her either. If he didn’t agree to this deal, she wouldn’t ever have the chance to disappear before Quinn got to her.

And no matter what, Seraph would know his name, his face, his real identity. The League was fucking omnipotent when it chose to focus on something, and he’d have to cut ties with Jordi to make sure his job wasn’t at risk. He’d have to cut ties with everyone. He might as well turn himself in and take the life sentence at that point, because he wouldn’t _have_ a life left.

He couldn’t afford to turn down this deal.

He couldn’t afford to make Seraph an enemy, a _real_ enemy.

Aiden heaved again, sucking in air hard as he tried to get himself under control. Couldn’t throw up—Seraph would question it. Couldn’t give any indication he’d moved. Had to stop panicking. Had to think, to plan, because if he _did_ have Seraph in his corner, this mission became more feasible. Even if the ringing in his ears and the flush of blood across his face was doing everything in its power to make him irrational, he had to stop and think. Had to get control of himself. _Had to_.

After an eternity, he managed to straighten again, dragging his mask off and running his fingers through his sweaty hair. The chilled air of the parking garage was useless at cooling his skin off with any possible breeze just as frozen as the rest of the world, but it gave him a few seconds to calm himself down. He’d see this through, and then—

Aiden swallowed, settling himself in the position he remembered stopping in. He pulled his mask back on, straightening it and disregarding the dampness, then blinked again.

“Fine,” he said, his voice shaking but resolute. “After this is done, I’ll unmask.”

* * *

Seraph didn’t tell him how he’d found this particular hideout of the Club’s, and Aiden didn’t ask. Down here by the marina, there were a surprising number of boathouses that went unnoticed by the authorities and tourists both, even after the decades of Mob control that had written themselves into Chicago’s bones. Maybe because of it. People knew better than to look too close at anything that might lead back to organized crime.

The League might step in to stop Iraq, but they had no obligation to do the same for Lucky Quinn. A smart person figured out quick that the superpowered street theater was just one layer of the crime shitcake; normal humans were the real nightmare an innocent person had to fear.

It did make Aiden wonder, of course, because the League officially _shouldn’t_ be investigating Club hangouts and Seraph was, if not a rule follower, disinclined to break rules without a good reason. But like the rest of Chicago, he was smart enough not to ask. If Seraph had ties to crime in his civilian identity, that wouldn’t be out of character for the League. More than one of their Heroes had been caught stirring up the same pot they supposedly guarded.

Unlike most of the marina, the boathouse was heavily guarded. Not in a way that stood out—there was no body armor, no search lights, no open carry of assault rifles like down at Iraq’s compound in Rossi-Fremont—but the tells were there for people who knew how to look. A lot of men, in casual clothes and jackets just baggy enough to hide their concealed guns, hanging around the best sightlines from the boathouse they were supposedly working at. Some of them roamed like they were bumming cigarettes or gossiping. Some of them pretended to work at untangling nets or checking the knots mooring the boats to the docks.

All of them were on high alert, keeping an eye out for him. Quinn wasn’t stupid. At some point, the Club expected the Fox to come for his Hound.

“Looks like they’re setting up a party for you,” Seraph said, his white armor dulled and fading into the shadows. There was a shimmer in the air, like it was moving, and when Aiden reached out to touch him, tiny specks of dirt cut across his fingers with surprising force. Not quite an invisibility shield, but something close.

“Yeah,” he replied, rubbing his finger and thumb together before turning his attention back to the boathouse. “How many of them can you put into the water at once?”

Seraph didn’t answer initially. Instead, he lifted a hand, carelessly waving to one side, then the other, like he was brushing dirt off the table. Almost instantly, men went flying—gnats, tossed carelessly into the dark water of the lake, batted aside by the hand of God. Seraph’s hand flicked a few more times, then lowered again.

“How’s that work for you?” The Hero’s voice was emotionless, but Aiden thought he could detect a curl of smugness in it. After all, Seraph rarely got a chance to show off what he could do in their fights—if he didn’t keep Aiden in the air, he’d never keep him at all.

“...Good enough,” Aiden said, trying not to feel that usual curl of arousal and interest. It was easier when he remembered the threat he’d have to live up to once they were done here.

“Then let’s go.” Without waiting for Aiden to respond, Seraph picked them both up and floated them over the water, kicking up the waves until a fine mist coated their skin.

It was a strange experience, being carted by telekinetic power without any of the aggression that usually came with it. Seraph wasn’t _gentle_. If anyone ever asked him, Aiden would go so far as to say it was antithetical to Seraph’s personality. The Hero could be cold, professional, furious, passionate, brutal—but anything softer than that was impossible for him. There were days Aiden thought that ice powers might have been more thematically appropriate.

Not that anyone would ever ask him. The Fox was notoriously uncapturable by other Heroes, but it was the kind of reputation that only the League cared about. He and Damien were C-listers for the media; if Damien hadn’t gotten himself arrested, they never would have ended up a headline in the first place. If Seraph had rivals, they weren’t Aiden. Not as far as the newspapers were concerned.

Soon to be less than Aiden, once this was done. His lips twisted unhappily as Seraph set him down on the wooden planks of the marina dock, but he continued forward without saying anything. No point in making a deal with the devil if he didn’t finish what he came here for. Damien needed rescuing—and then an asskicking.

If he was alive enough for either, that was.

“Looks like you got most of them the first time,” Aiden said softly, moving as silently as he could up the steps to the far side of the marina. The door would be around the front.

“Small fry,” Seraph agreed, contempt thick in his electronic voice. “I guess there’s reasons they won’t let us clean this city up the right way.”

“Rule of the strongest is how Lucky Quinn got where he was. I don’t see how the League’s going to be any better.” Rather than let Seraph get another word in edgewise, Aiden blinked and paused the world in front of the door he’d been angling towards. If he’d been on his own, he’d break in the quiet way, but—

Time wasn’t a factor for him, not really. He took a step back, then slammed his foot into the space just below the lock, again and again, leaving no visible marks in the muted twilight. It took him a moment to recenter himself, and then he blinked again, letting the flow of time resume.

The door exploded inwards.

“Subtle,” Seraph said, the end of the word drowned out by the shouting from the men inside. In intervals just short enough to be mistaken for reflexes and super speed, Aiden bolted through the room, bullets whizzing past his skull. There was a familiar shape slumped over in a corner, bloody and broken, and nothing was going to stop Aiden from reaching it.

Two of the Club’s torturers were yanked past him, their bodies half-broken by the velocity even before Seraph slammed them into the floor with bone crushing force. They couldn’t afford to leave witnesses, a fact that the Hero was all too accepting of, but Aiden refused to think about that. Damien was a mess, fingers broken and nails driven through his feet, one ear hanging only by the barest strip of skin. He was conscious, the poor bastard.

“Took you… long enough,” Damien rasped, his blue eyes bright and aware even as his expression spasmed with pain when Aiden tried to lift him.

“They worked you over good.” Shifting his grip to something more appropriate, Aiden tried a second time, managing to heft his partner up. “Did you tell them anything?”

“Do you think I’m fucking stupid?” Damien grimaced again, hissing furiously when Aiden’s grip slipped. “My boy, you think too little of me. I told them nothing. I wouldn’t be—alive if I had.”

“If you’re alive enough to talk you’re alive enough to walk,” Aiden said, the tight fear in his chest easing with the reassurance. Even if he had to give himself up to the League for it, he’d managed to get here fast enough. Damien hadn’t spilled the beans.

His family would be safe.

The stumbling that Damien was hissing expletives over wasn’t really ‘walking’, but it was close enough for Aiden to work with. He hauled his partner through the ruined doorframe, past the carnage Seraph was enacting on the closed room, and into the night air. Home stretch. Just had to make it over the water and back to the shore, then to the safe house they’d stocked up a few years ago.

Bridge controls to his left. A body flying over the water as Seraph emerged behind him and surveyed his handiwork. Damien’s body, heavy and warm in his arms, his feet stumbling and dragging over the wood docks as Aiden supported most of his weight. Once they were out of the open, everything would be okay.

Pain exploded through him and Aiden blinked instinctively, freezing the world as he tried to make sense of it again. The lights around the boathouse had a gritty, red edge to them, gleaming fragments of bone held in stasis in front of his eyes. He couldn’t see the bullet, but he could see the vacuum it left behind, the shimmering tail of air that hadn’t closed yet, the invisible soundwave still several feet away.

There was a _wrongness_ to the whole tableau, something that Aiden couldn’t quite put his finger on as he staggered backwards and let Damien’s weight slip from his suddenly numb arm. Something missing. The red gleam in the lights slipped, the spray of blood sliding out of his view as he found himself falling back, and Aiden finally realized that the thing missing was Damien’s _face_ , a hole gouged through his head by a high caliber bullet from—where?

Time started again, even though he could have sworn he didn’t blink, and Damien’s body hit the docks with a meaty, final thud. The pain was _worse_ now, his blood pumping in a way it hadn’t before, adrenaline hitting as he struggled to breathe and fought his mask off with his good hand. Somewhere, out on the dark water or in the buildings facing the shore, there was a sniper. No—not in the buildings. Whatever lingering trail had followed the bullet came from over the water, from the north. The quay?

“Seraph,” he tried to say, his voice cutting out with the ringing in his ears. Aiden cleared his throat, sucking in air without the restriction of fabric in the way, and tried again. “ _Seraph_. Sniper on the quay—”

God, why was it so hard to breathe? He blinked to stop time, to give himself _space_ , but the seconds ticked on anyways. At some point he’d dropped to the wooden deck, its grain harsh under his fingers, and his other hand still wasn’t working right. But that didn’t make sense, because he didn’t remember falling, and he’d never lost time before. It was impossible for him.

Aiden always remembered everything. So why couldn’t he remember the second Damien had gone from swearing to silent, whole to broken, alive to—

Hands on his face but Aiden couldn’t push them away, not when he was already fighting so hard just to stay awake. The ringing in his ears drowned out whatever the hands were trying to say, hard acrylic that was so achingly familiar and impersonal all at once. Not Seraph, because Seraph should be taking care of the sniper—Aiden had _warned_ him about the sniper, hadn’t he—there was a gunman who’d shot Damien and if they didn’t catch him, Aiden wouldn’t be able to—

It was so hard to—

* * *

Consciousness swam in with a sticky sluggishness, filling the black tar in his skull and leaking down into his limbs drip by drip. He couldn’t open his eyes, not immediately, but he slowly became aware of their existence again, and of his toes, his fingers, the taut glue in his throat sealing his whole windpipe closed as he tried to swallow around it. His mouth felt like it was full of cotton, matched only by the cotton stuffed into his skull, soaking up the tar and replacing it with its own kind of dissociative numbness.

Aiden peeled his eyes open with effort, blinking the blurriness out of them as he stared up at the off-white tiles of the ceiling above him. There was the softest click next to him, the sound of ice tacking against ice in a styrofoam cup, and then the plasticky texture pushed up against his fingers. He coughed, tried to swallow again, and curled his fingers around the cup, lifting it with a trembling hand. It took a bit of work, but he managed to push a couple ice chips into his mouth, letting them melt on his tongue and finally easing the horrible dryness of his mouth.

A hospital, then, but he wasn’t sure which one. There was an IV in his other arm, the tubes annoying and the needle buried in just the wrong spot for him to bend at the elbow, but at least he was ambidextrous. Not like he couldn’t manage with just one arm anyways. The question was, why was he here?

He’d been on the docks with Seraph. Damien had been— 

His throat was suddenly tight for a different reason, one that the ice couldn’t quite ease. They hadn’t always been friendly, but they had been friends. The Fox and the Hound had been damn near legendary as a thieving team, even if they hadn’t ranked high enough to count as a threat to the League or most of the civilians that kept track of Mask activity. To the people in the know, they’d been the ones to match. And now…

Someone had handed him the cup. Aiden blinked again, telling himself that Damien wasn’t worth shedding tears over, then looked to his left. Seraph’s white armor wasn’t white enough for the hospital setting, showing the nicks and scrapes under the harsh lighting, smears of dirt on the flat surfaces and dried blood on his gloves. The helmet sitting between his legs was still smooth and blank, untarnished by whatever he’d gotten into to look so disheveled.

His helmet. Aiden stared at it, then slowly lifted his gaze to meet Jordi’s dark eyes.

“Think you can manage some water?” Jordi asked, his voice uncharacteristically soft and gentle. There was a plastic bottle resting on the side table that could be swung out over Aiden’s bed, and Jordi opened it without waiting for an answer.

Aiden coughed when he tried to speak, reaching for the bottle instead of asking the hundred questions buzzing around his head. Was this some kind of sick joke? Had Seraph developed the ability to read minds, to craft illusions, to do any of the other million things psychics were supposed to be able to do? The only possible explanation—that Seraph and Jordi were the same person, that Aiden had been falling in love with his best friend and fucking him at the same time—was too ludicrous to consider. There was no way. And yet.

He didn’t ask the stupid questions that filled his chest up with something tense and longing. Instead, he croaked, “What did you tell them?”

Jordi’s eyes crinkled at the corners even if he didn’t smile, the way they only did when he thought Aiden was being clever. “I was out in costume and saw you get shot. Seeing as how I don’t want you to die anytime soon, I brought you back to our hospital—too many questions if a Hero shows up at a civvie place with just one victim and no Mask in sight.”

Which meant that the League didn’t realize the Fox was sitting in their clutches right now. Seraph—Jordi—he must have taken off the distinctive jacket and hidden it away with Aiden’s mask; the rest of his costume was innocuous, if well-made, civilian clothing, so even if the colors raised alarm bells, the clothes themselves wouldn’t. And while Seraph wasn’t well known for his charity acts, _Jordi_ …

As if he could read Aiden’s mind, Jordi continued, “It’s usually frowned upon to reveal our identities like this, but given the circumstances, they made an exception. I don’t have a lot of friends, Aiden. Everyone in the League knows how much I care about you.”

“Oh,” Aiden said, hoarse and a little shell-shocked. Because it wasn’t _just_ the fact that they were friends—had been friends for years, had been the _only_ friend Aiden had outside of Damien because he was reclusive and cagey and hard to get along with—it was everything else, the things Jordi _wasn’t_ saying. It was the casual sex that they had in costume, it was the years of catch and release Seraph had done with him, it was the fact that he’d valued his relationship with Seraph almost as much as he valued his relationship with Jordi and they were the same goddamn _person_.

“You heal pretty fast,” Jordi said when it became clear that Aiden wasn’t contributing anything else to the conversation. “The surgeon said that your tissues were trying to repair themselves when he had you under the knife. Still would have lost you without blood and them getting your lung back up and running.”  
  
“It’s a talent. My sister’s lucky.” Euphemisms for the kind of people that didn’t want to become masks, but Jordi would recognize it for the brush off it was. “Do you really work for the IRS?”

There was a long moment of silence before Jordi made a choked, honking snort of a laugh. As Aiden watched, his calm demeanor shattered, head dropping into his hands as his shoulders shook.

“Jesus christ,” Jordi wheezed, face hidden, “jesus _fucking_ christ, of course you would ask.”  
  
“It’s a relevant goddamn question, Jordi. _I_ still drive for rideshares and you live in a swanky League tower.” A slow, familiar smile stretched over Aiden’s face, the scene so comfortably like their usual brunches that he couldn’t question Jordi’s identity anymore. Of course he was Seraph. Of course Seraph was Jordi. His stupid luck made it inevitable that Aiden would fall in love with both.

“I work for the IRS! Just not, y’know, all the fucking time. Everyone in the League has a dayjob, unless they’re one of the poor bastards that can’t look normal—it’s in the regs.” Jordi finally lifted his head, wiping some of the dampness from the corners of his eyes. “Jesus. Yeah, it’s more of a part-time position. Usually when I go off the radar, it’s for League shit instead.”

“And they’ll just let you admit that to me?” Maybe a decade of friendship had some benefits, but he’d expected the League to be more tight-lipped about it.

“You’ll have to sign a gag order when they discharge you, but I’ve been given some… leeway, let’s say, in how much I tell you know.” Jordi’s grin flashed, bright and a little bit mean, and Aiden couldn’t help it. He blinked.

Like that, frozen perfectly in time, Jordi’s grin was even brighter. The blood on his armor looked blacker, smears of Aiden’s corrupting influence on his pristine reputation but—fuck it, it wasn’t like Seraph was a stellar guy to begin with. They’d just figure out a new normal.

Aiden blinked again, letting the flow of time resume, then finished off his water. “When am I getting out, do you think?”

“Maybe another hour or two, once they’re sure you can walk around without puncturing your lung again,” Jordi said, and there was a hidden _something_ in his voice that had Aiden sitting up straighter. “I’ll pick you up in civvies. Then we can talk.”

Yeah. That was definitely something that needed to happen.

* * *

The doctors hadn’t been happy about releasing him, but the skin around his bullet wound was pink and healthy, healing around the dissolvable stitches without issue. With his heart rate and blood pressure evened out and his reported pain low, they had little reason to keep him—and the League, as magnanimous as they might be, didn’t want him in their secure facility for long. After signing a pile of papers that made sure he’d never tell anyone _anything_ , he was gently booted out the front door.

Jordi was waiting for him by the car.

They sat in silence as Jordi pulled out of the League’s compound, on to the private road and turning towards the north end of the city. Away from his sister’s home, away from the shared apartment Damien would never come back to, and away from the condo Aiden knew Jordi rented. In fact, he noticed with a frown, the blazing color of dusk painting the car in gold like stopped time did, they were heading towards the Mad Mile.

“Here’s the problem,” Jordi said as they hit the highway, “the League isn’t allowed to touch civilians.”

“Right,” Aiden said, wondering where he was going with this. Jordi was wearing a suit again, dark grey with a blood red shirt underneath, and there was an edge of violence to him that seemed out of character. Jordi was bright, fast, snarky, but _Seraph_ was supposed to be the one constantly on the cusp of murder.

“That fucker Lucky Quinn, he knows that. It’s why he’s never played the Mask game, not the way Iraq does, not the way your stupid partner did. But he was funding the Viceroys, we _know_ it, and we can’t do fucking shit.”

A few things clicked into place. He watched Jordi’s knuckles go white around the steering wheel, thought about the IRS assignment Jordi had made vague allusions to, and said, “The League was going to send you to kill Iraq, but as long Quinn’s buying Masks, it won’t matter.”

“ _Exactly_ ,” Jordi said, teeth bared in something closer to a snarl than a smile. “And then he went and fucking shot you. So Seraph can’t fucking touch him—rules don’t say _shit_ about what Jordi Chin does.”

“I’m guessing that’s not a view that the legislature shares.” But their direction made sense now, even if it left Aiden’s heart in his throat. He couldn’t be really sure Damien hadn’t talked. The Club would always be a threat. It was an unconscionable risk.

His chest ached.

“Yeah, no, but they don’t know what we’re doing now. The big problem is that even with your reflexes, I’m not sure how we’re going to break into the Merlaut.” Jordi passed a massive truck, slid through traffic with a confidence that Aiden admired even if he winced at how rough Jordi was with the car, and settled into a lane again.

Time to face the music. Right now, Jordi knew who he was, knew everything about him, except for that one thing Aiden had never admitted out loud. Not to Damien. Not even to Nicky, who persisted in believing it was _luck_ that left her catching things before they fell. He had to unstick his throat and say it _now_ , before Jordi started planning this without all the facts.

“I’m still surprised you healed up so fast,” Jordi continued before Aiden could get the words out. “I mean, it’s great, I’m _so_ glad you’re not dead, but shit. Falls in with the super strength and stuff too?”

“I stop time,” Aiden said.

There was a beat of silence before Jordi snickered and glanced over. His amusement drained at the look on Aiden’s face, but he had to turn his attention back to the road before Aiden caught any other expressions on his face. Hard to tell if he was angry, confused, or just blank.

“That’s why I’m fast. Why I’m strong. I stop time and I… _manipulate_ things when everything else is stopped. Kinetic energy builds up if you apply it often enough in a short period of time, and the same goes for dispersal, for moving fast…” He swallowed, unable to look away from Jordi’s emotionless profile. “I guess healing fast is part of that, though I’ve never tested it before. When I look like I have good reflexes, it’s because I’m altering the time flow in specific intervals to look just barely superhuman.”

“You stop time,” Jordi said, something almost like wonder in his voice.

“Yeah. Uh. Sorry I didn’t tell you before now.” Not that the Fox would _ever_ have given Seraph that kind of leverage. “Your brain was the only thing I couldn’t escape, you know.”

“Jesus, Aiden.” Jordi’s hands relaxed, slid down the sides of the steering wheel as he turned them towards the street parking outside the Merlaut. “You’ve got the _worst_ timing.”

“In my defense, you didn’t tell me where we were going until halfway there.”

“How long can you stay stopped in time?” The question caught Aiden off guard, his own prepared jibe falling dead on his tongue. He’d almost forgotten why they were here, even with the bulk of the hotel hovering above them, the setting sun casting shadows across the broad stretch of grass between the street and the building. A line of cars depositing the wealthy and elite stretched from the front door.

Aiden took it in with a long look, then considered it. Impossible to truly _tell time_ in that golden-hued silence he dropped into, but he thought he could get pretty far if he had to. The real problem would be the obstacles in his way.

“Do you have a mask for me?” he asked, turning back. Jordi was holding out a blank, black piece of fabric, the kind a robber or a new Mask might use.

“Quinn’s hosting a thing at the top,” Jordi said, pushing a pair of dark sunglasses over his face and pulling a surgical mask out from his car console. “I’ll meet you there?”

“I’ll beat you there,” Aiden said as he climbed out of the car.

He took a moment to orient himself, left only in his jeans and a spare shirt of Jordi’s after the loss of his clothes. Hard to think of how long he’d been out, but his internal clock said it had been close to twenty-four hours now. Frankly, he looked like a bum—a bum or a wannabe techie, shirt buttoned but only half tucked into his jeans, in boots but no jacket despite the faint chill of spring. With the setting sun blazing off the windows of the buildings around him, no one would look at him twice.

For a few seconds, he just took in the sight. Then he blinked.

The harsh light of the setting sun softened, smoothed out, went hazy around the edges. Aiden pulled on the black mask, striding across the lawn towards the hotel with an eye out for anything that would be damaged by his passage. The grass, certainly, but hopefully not so much that it would be obvious he’d been through here. Once he was on the pavement, he relaxed a little.

Luck was with him when he reached the door, held open by a valet that was gesturing to a woman in a magnificent hat. Aiden ducked past her, careful not to touch either of them, into the lushly carpeted and marbled interior of the hotel. The soft yellow glow of slowed time followed him, glinting off the gold accents and gleaming on the glass of the front desk. He walked past it all, hooking around a corner to the elevators, then paused with his hands in front of the mirrored doors. This part would be tricky.

Could use Seraph, he thought, unable to stop himself from smiling at how ridiculous that was. Could use _Jordi_.

He blinked, letting the flow of time resume as he called an elevator. A calculated risk, when he looked so obviously like someone casing the place and had appeared in an instant on the cameras, but there was no promise the staircase would lead to the roof. Maybe the Merlaut was up to code, but Aiden didn’t trust gangsters not to be paranoid. Not when those gangsters worked with _Iraq_.

The doors chimed softly, sweetly, opening smoothly in front of him. Aiden walked into the elevator, punching the highest floor that would register without a keycard, then leaned back with his hands in his pockets to scan the ceiling. The panel was cleverly hidden, but he found it soon enough, and it was child’s play to remove it.

A full three floors before his destination, the elevator slowed to a halt. Without waiting for the doors to open again, Aiden blinked.

Climbing out of the elevator was easy but scaling the interior of the shaft was _not_. Sweat beaded on his brow as he hauled himself up, his chest screaming in pain from the motion. A fall from this height wouldn’t kill him, but it would hurt like a bitch and make this whole process take longer. He refused to fall.

His muscles still trembled when he finally reached the top floor, the doors shut tight and impenetrable. With a grunt, Aiden got himself into a more secure position on the lip of the door before slamming his fist into the hard metal. Again. Again. As many times as it took, until he was sure the collected energy from the blows had finally had an effect.

He blinked. The doors exploded outwards. He blinked again, then followed them out.

The hallway outside the elevators was empty, no guards in sight. Aiden paced down it’s length in a steady, ground-eating lope, passing mahogany doors with brass accents as he approached the massive double doors that lead to the rooftop bar and entertainment space. He didn’t know what event Quinn was hosting, but he knew where it would be—and no lock would be able to stop him.

With smooth violence, he lifted a leg and kicked the doors open. Blinked. Felt the wood shatter past his masked face. Blinked again.

Past the frozen explosion of splinters and twisted metal, a cluster of wealthy patrons had just begun to turn toward the commotion. The movers and shakers of Chicago, politicians, CEOs, the elite and the merely famous. A crowd of fine suits and glittering dresses, interspersed with the dark, identical shapes of Club enforcers tapped to play bouncers 

Carefully, Aiden slipped between them, trying not to touch the bodies half-shifted to face him. Impossible to avoid it entirely, but he kept his movements slow and gentle, barely brushing against limbs and sides. At worst, he’d leave bruises. It was the most he could ask for, with how much of Chicago’s upper crust had chosen to come to this party. And there, in the center of the mass he was so meticulously making his way through, was Quinn—old, hunched over, covered in liver spots and looking like he was on death’s door. Empty space opened up around him, no one daring to get too close to the most dangerous man in the city.

In the golden hues of stopped time, he looked small. Tiny even. And when Aiden reached out to press his fingers against the fragile curve of Quinn’s chest, he could feel how easily it would crumple underneath a single punch.

Just to be sure, Aiden hit him three times.

He blinked. A wall of noise slammed into him, the music, the voices, the crunch and shatter of wood, and underneath it all the faintest shocked wheeze from Quinn, whose lips parted as his body crumpled. Blood bloomed on the front of his shirt, his chest collapsing inwards. The security detail noticed, started yelling, turned their guns towards him as Aiden smiled behind the mask and _blinked_.

As the golden light spilled outwards, he ducked under the outstretched arm of a guard, swung carefully around a cluster of screaming models, and made his way to the rooftop doors. Open, thankfully, and not as crowded as they could have been. He slipped between frozen bodies, ducked behind the bar, made his way towards the stairs and the slowly emptying space beyond the bulk of the party. Everyone wanted to be close to Quinn, to the power in the room.

Easier for him now that he’d reached the railing on the roof, as far away from the party as he could manage. The golden haze made it harder to see beyond the edge of the building, the frozen light of the sun still glaring as it dipped below Chicago’s skyline. The shadows of buildings stretched like accusing fingers, obscuring the road where the car had been parked.

It had been three minutes, almost exactly, since he’d stepped out of Jordi's car. Time enough for him to get into position?

Only one way to tell. Aiden blinked, climbing over the railing carefully as the screams and gunfire erupted behind him. He peered down, then squinted up into the sky, hunting for any sign that Jordi was waiting. Impossible to tell with the sunset turning everything dark and blinding simultaneously.

“You’d better catch me,” he muttered before pushing off and letting himself drop.

For a single, breathless moment he was in freefall. And then the familiar touch of Jordi’s mind wrapped around him, bolstering him up before yanking him across the sky, hauling him out of reach of the Club security just now realizing where he’d escaped to. Let everyone speculate about the Mask who’d killed Quinn—it hadn't been Seraph and it hadn't been the Fox, so Aiden only felt cool satisfaction for a job well done.

His family was safe. Jordi was safe. Damien… he’d grieve for Damien later, feel the remorse once the frustration wasn't so keen. Damien had been playing a dangerous game, getting involved in this shit, and it had finally caught up to him. Aiden had warned him.

It still hurt, knowing one of his only friends was dead. But…

His momentum slowed, a massive tower of condominiums looming above him. He couldn't pull the mask off, not while Jordi’s power had him fully in its grip, but he craned his head the best he could as he slowly drifted up towards a balcony. Now he could see Jordi, floating down to it at the same rate; he must have been hiding up near the clouds when he'd pulled this stunt, out of the visual range of the Merlaut’s cameras.

“The car?” Aiden asked as he was set down, tugging the mask off and rubbing his chest where the gunshot still ached.

“Parked somewhere out of sight,” Jordi said, eyeing him up and down. “You're okay?”

“Just fi—” Jordi’s mouth was on his before he could get the words out, hands gripping his shirt and hauling him forward. Aiden gasped, the bolt of lightning burning through him impossible to resist, and fisted his hands in Jordi's hair to keep him close.

How many times had he dreamed of this? Jordi’s mouth on his, seeing Seraph’s face while the fucked, the messy combination of the two that he’d never been able to reconcile. And now he had it, both of them, Jordi’s touch so blisteringly familiar even as his mouth was shocking and new.

His chest heaved when they finally broke apart, the flush on his cheeks mirroring the one he could see painted across Jordi’s face.

Jordi licked his lips, smoothed his hands down Aiden's sides before resting them at his hips. A smug grin stretched across his lips as he leaned in and whispered, “So have you ever thought about working for the IRS?”

It startled a laugh out of him, his fingers loosening in Jordi’s hair despite the way he swayed into the curve of Jordi’s body. With night looming and the chill touch of winter still lingering, he didn’t want to stay out on this balcony for long, but he didn’t want to break away from Jordi’s grip either. He wanted—

“I have thought about fucking you for so long,” Aiden breathed, their lips brushing with every word. “If I have to be a tax collector for that, I guess I’m willing to try white collar crime.”

Jordi let out an inelegant snort, his grip on Aiden’s hips tightening. “What’s a little crime between friends? Maybe we should roleplay that one out. You get to be the scary cop, I get to be the saucy bankrobber…”

“Or maybe you could just give me a tour of the bedroom,” Aiden said, finally pulling his hands free and smoothing them down the silk of Jordi’s shirt, red fabric body-warm under his touch. He wanted their clothes _off_ , wanted a chance to touch all those muscles he could feel trapped underneath, wanted a chance to finally _see_ Jordi, see Seraph outside of hard acrylic, see them both spread out across a mattress and _longing_ the way Aiden had been for years.

“Well, if you _insist_.” The balcony door slid open, propelled by Jordi’s thoughts. Aiden hadn’t been able to see through it with the setting sun blindingly bright against the glass but it didn’t lead to a living room or a kitchen like he’d expected; instead, a massive california king bed sat low in an ebony frame, the bedside tables and the dresser matching with understated elegance. The sheets were rucked up, kicked aside, clearly lived in rather than the designer cleanliness that Aiden had half-expected.

He didn’t break away from Jordi, not entirely, but he did drag them both towards the bed with a little more force than necessary. It was a nice change from being thrown around himself, having Jordi too eager at his heels and letting Aiden direct him. Even nicer still was the chance to grab Jordi’s face and kiss him again, their fingers tangling as they fought each other’s shirts off.

Jordi’s jacket hit the floor, his silk button up right behind it, and Aiden couldn’t help a soft noise of wonder as he caught the edge of Jordi’s undershirt and lifted. Seraph’s suit had been molded for a specific look, while Jordi’s suits had been cut to hide, and underneath all those layers was pure _muscle_ —dark hair outlined the divots of his abs, curled up around the swell of his pecs like a promise, dove down below the hemline of his slacks where Aiden could see Jordi’s cock straining at the fabric. His desperate pace slowed, turned wondering as he followed the curve of muscle at Jordi’s side, the rise of his hipbone where it cut sharply into a v.

The hands on his own chest were equally slow and deliberate, Jordi’s fingers terribly careful as they undid the tape on the wound dressings. There wasn’t any blood left on the gauze, the skin underneath pink and newly healed. It would scar, but it wasn’t the biggest scar Aiden had. Jordi found those easily enough, old and mostly faded after more than a decade, but he didn’t pay any more attention to them than he did the long-healed burn that skated over Aiden’s hip, the only reminder of his first and last encounter with Iraq.

“Shoes,” Aiden said, leaning into Jordi’s touch as his hands drifted down to the fly of Jordi’s slacks. Easy enough to kick his own off, his fingers hooked in the hem of Jordi’s slacks for balance, but Jordi had a much harder time with his fancy clothes.

“Should’ve worn my cheap shit,” Jordi muttered, eventually admitting defeat and detaching himself from Aiden to focus on undressing. “This shit’s expensive enough that I’d regret ripping it to pieces.”

“Poor you.” Aiden couldn’t hide the amusement in his voice, even if it was much easier to kick his jeans off without interference. He didn’t stop looking though, couldn’t tear his eyes away from the skin being revealed as Jordi managed to work his way free.

It was familiar and alien all at once, the face Aiden had fallen in love with and the cock he’d taken more times than he could count attached to this incredible body he’d never gotten the chance to see. There were old scars laced up Jordi’s back, visible only because he turned away to hang his clothes up, and the curve of his ass was as gorgeous as Aiden had always dreamed it being. He itched to touch, then remembered he _could_ and reached out, smoothing his hand down Jordi’s spine and the mostly faded marks cut across it.

“I have wanted to see you naked for so fucking long, Jordi,” he said, voice hushed. Jordi turned under his palm, muscles flexing as Aiden’s fingers came to rest just under his ribs. There was so much _power_ there, pure physical ability that Aiden envied and lusted after all at once.

Some of it must have shown in his face, because a gleam sparked into Jordi’s eyes a bare second before Aiden was tossed back on the bed. Using his hands, not his mind for once.

A breathless laugh escaped him as Aiden bounced on the mattress, but he was up and yanking Jordi back into a kiss before the other man could say anything about it. And Jordi let himself be kissed, let himself be dragged down by Aiden’s greedy hands, his touch equally demanding as he smoothed his palms over the meat of Aiden’s thighs.

Aiden hooked a leg over Jordi’s hip, pulled him closer, and then used his leverage to flip them both. It startled a grunt out of Jordi, who looked a little shocked to be on his back, but Aiden settled across his thighs before Jordi could do anything about it. Seraph would have tossed him across the room for that stunt; underneath him, Jordi just looked up and said, “ _Well_. If you want to take the reins, feel free I guess.”

“One of these days, I’m going to bend you over a counter,” Aiden said, dragging his palms down Jordi’s chest just to watch him arch up into the motion. “I could never come up with a good excuse to carry a strapon to a bank robbery, but I have your home address now, Jordi. And I’m _really_ good at breaking into places.”

Jordi’s eyes darkened, his fingers digging into Aiden’s thighs hard enough to bruise. His cock was full and dark now, tantalizingly close to Aiden’s own as he rocked his hips forward. “Yeah? What, finally going to put me in my place?”

“It’ll be novel,” Aiden said, flushed with victory and the knowledge that _he could do that now_. He could trust Jordi to be safe, could trust that if he let Seraph see him, nothing bad would happen. For once, there weren’t any secrets between them.

“You—” Jordi cut off with a groan as Aiden finally touched him, curled his fingers around Jordi’s cock and stroked as the pre beaded at Jordi’s tip. “Jesus christ. Fucking—condoms. Now.”

The bedside table slid open, slim foil packet flinging itself at Aiden about as desperately as Jordi had, followed shortly by a bottle of lube. He laughed at that, then laughed at the way Jordi groaned louder when he pulled his fingers away. “What, you don’t want to hear about how I’ll eat your ass before I fuck it? How I’m going to rail you so hard all those Leaguers will wonder if you got injured on the job?”

“If you don’t get on my dick in the next thirty seconds, I’m going to rescind my job offer,” Jordi said, tipping his head back with a soft gasp as Aiden rolled the condom on him and smeared lub down his length. “I’m going to snap and we’ll have to be criminals forever and I am a _very_ obnoxious crime partner.”

“You say the sweetest things.” But the heat that was burning through him made Aiden _ache_ , so as tempting as it was to tease Jordi further, he moved instead, lifting up and guiding Jordi in slowly. It was so _familiar_ , the way Jordi slid into him like he belonged there, the way his cock filled Aiden up like it had for years, the way Jordi’s grip turned bruising as it shifted up towards Aiden’s hips. A low groan of his own escaped him as Aiden finally settled, Jordi fully seated inside him and his hands shaking a little as they dragged up Jordi’s chest again.

He could finally, _finally_ see Seraph’s face, see the way his lips parted as he rolled his hips up, see the way his cheeks stained pink with lust and excitement. Aiden drank the sight in greedily, rocked down on Jordi’s cock with a soft gasp as Jordi thrusted up. This was—

“I love you,” he breathed, bracing his hands against the pillows as he leaned forward for a kiss. Because he couldn’t _not_ kiss Jordi now that he had the chance, couldn’t resist the temptation when he’d stared at Seraph’s blank mask so many times now and _wondered_.

The guttural groan he got in return was worth it, one of Jordi’s hands detaching from his hip to bury itself in his hair and drag him closer. Jordi’s mouth was hot and wet and desperate, his beard catching against Aiden’s stubble as he rocked his hips up to the sound of Aiden’s ragged gasps. The drag of Jordi’s cock inside him, the sharp points of pain when his hair was tugged, it was already too much and it felt like they’d only just started.

“Jordi—” Aiden shuddered, his fingers curling tight enough to tear the sheets as pleasure swamped over him, through him, overwhelming as it fired along his nerves and left him shaking.

“Oh fuck, don’t _stop_ ,” Jordi groaned, fucking up into him harder.

And it was—God, but he _couldn’t_ stop, couldn’t help rolling his hips again as Jordi arched underneath him and pulled his hand free from Aiden’s hair to clutch at the headboard instead. His knuckles were white, the muscle in his arm taut and flexing, the expression on his face _beautiful_ , and Aiden couldn’t resist grinding against him as he leaned back. He wanted to see Jordi fall to pieces. He wanted to see Jordi _wrecked_.

“Come on,” Aiden breathed as he leaned back, lifting up and driving himself down on Jordi harder now, just to feel the burn in his thighs and see the way Jordi flushed. The hand on his hip slid lower, clutched at his thigh and dug blunt nails into the skin there hard enough to leave a mark, so Aiden returned the favor by dragging his own nails down the shuddering muscle in Jordi’s chest. “Come on, fuck, I want to see your face when you do, I want to see _you_ , Jordi—”

Underneath him, Jordi choked out something that almost sounded like his name, hips snapping up as the doors to the bedroom all blew open. Aiden laughed, raspy and delighted by the loss of control, the first time he’d _ever_ seen Jordi as anything more than perfectly contained. It made him feel powerful. It made him feel _wanted_.

Slowly, Jordi went lax, his fingers unclenching as he lifted his shaking hands to cup Aiden’s face instead. He leaned into the touch, pulling off of Jordi with a soft groan before letting himself collapse forward as Jordi rolled them both into the less tangled sheets. Behind him, he could hear the doors gently clicking shut again, Jordi’s legs tangling with his own as Aiden wrapped his arms around Jordi’s neck and leaned in to kiss him again.

And this would be the moment he would freeze, normally. This would be the moment he tried to preserve forever, Jordi’s lips parting against his own as Jordi’s hands smoothed over his jaw and neither of them made any effort to deal with cleaning up. This would be the second he tried to keep for eternity, a single shining moment that he’d refuse to let go. Because he could never be sure that he’d get another one, never be sure that his life as a Mask wouldn’t catch up to him eventually, never be sure that Jordi would actually kiss him back again.

Except.

Aiden didn’t blink as Jordi whispered, “Holy shit, I love you.”


End file.
